E-commerce is currently in boom in India, and that has resulted in some heavy decline in sales for offline stores. And armed with billions from investors to support their deep-discount model, a visit to a Brick-Mortar store has clearly become a once-in-a-blue-moon phenomena.
However, startups have started to come up in verticals wherein they are helping physical retailers get online and revitalise their businesses. One such startup, MySmartPrice has just landed with $10 Million from Accel Partners, with participation from Helion Venture Partners to help consumers make a more informed choice for the products they purchase.
MySmartPrice is in general, a price comparison tool, which lets you compare prices of gadgets and other products via both online and offline stores. While the website, which initially started as a tech and gadget-focused price comparison service, now serves across a plethora of other verticals to help every segment of the online consumer market.
Sulakshan Kumar, Co-founder & CEO, MySmartPrice, says,
The fresh round of funds will be used to build a truly omnichannel platform which will facilitate users to search, decide and buy Any Product from Any Store, whether online or offline. Our vision is also to enable millions of small retailers and entrepreneurs to improve their businesses by truly digitising them.
The site, designed with an extremely minimalistic and user-centric design, currently sees an impressive 10 Million unique visitors per month and $120 million in GMV annually. MySmartPrice’s focus continues to remain heavily towards offline retailers, to help them get an online presence and compete on an equal footing with online giants like Flipkart, Amazon India, Snapdeal.
MySmartPrice’s offline retail partners currently span across three cities, with support for two more coming soon, but the service is aiming to expand to 50 cities — and 100,000 retailers — using this fresh influx of capital. It is also eyeing a staggering $1 Billion in GMV. The company said its offline partners are already transacting $2-3 million from its site per month.
Company’s android app provides prices of products and specifications and has a dedicated section for offers and deals. In Hyderabad, Bangalore and Delhi, app users also get to see the price of mobile phones among offline retailers in vicinity. The service has recently begun in Chennai and is expected to launch in Mumbai next month.
MySmartPrice raised $0.37 Mn in May 2012 and $1 million in Series A funding in December 2013 from existing investors Helion Ventures and Accel Partners.
